Marine vehicle no longer safe against insurgent bombs

DARRIN MORTENSON - Staff Writer

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The huge blast that killed 14 Marines who were riding in an
armored vehicle in Iraq on Wednesday may have stolen a valuable
sense of security that Camp Pendleton's Marines have been counting
on as they prepare to deploy to Iraq.

The Marines —— reservists from the Ohio-based 3rd Battalion,
25th Regiment —— and an Iraqi interpreter were killed near Iraq's
western border with Syria, when roadside bombs exploded either
under or alongside their Amphibious Assault Vehicle, or
"amtrack."

While lightly armored, the 28-ton troop transporters have been
regarded by Marines as their safest bet for surviving insurgent
attacks on Iraq's roads —— providing more shelter than their
fragile Humvees and open-backed, 7-ton trucks.

But insurgents have learned to build bigger bombs with more
focused charges, and as Marines learned Wednesday, now not even the
amtracks are safe.

"These vehicles were not designed to withstand the type of bombs
that (insurgents) are using out there," John Pike, a military
analyst with the Virginia-based think tank globalsecurity.org, said
in Wednesday.

"The bottom line is that not even an M-1 Abrams (tank) is safe
from all these bombs," he said.

Amtracks out of their league

Marines have used the Amphibious Assault Vehicle for more than
three decades.

The amtracks, often just called "tracks," have tracks like a
tank rather than wheels and look like a flat-bottomed box with a
sloped nose akin to a boat bow. They are designed to bring Marines
and a three-man crew from ship to shore.

While the light, water-tight vehicle is ideal for amphibious
landings, it has been used for missions in Iraq that have surprised
even the Marines.

During the invasion in early 2003, thousands of Camp
Pendleton-based Marines drove in amtracks across the Kuwaiti
border. At least one unit claimed they drove their amtracks 1,000
miles during the invasion alone —— three times its normal
range.

Some of the vehicles "swam" across a stretch of the Tigris River
into Baghdad.

When the Marines returned to Iraq in early 2004, the amtracks
were often used to protect Marines from small arms fire, mortar
shrapnel and rocket-propelled grenades.

But the insurgents' increasing use of roadside bombs may have
rendered the Marines last mobile refuge obsolete.

Insurgents up the ante

In recent testimony to the House Armed Services Committee,
Assistant Marine Corps Commandant Gen. William Nyland said U.S.
troops face mounting threats on the roads of Iraq.

There is "no one absolute armor technique, or procedure that can
counter these growing threats 100 percent of the time," he
said.

In a news conference Wednesday at the Pentagon, Army Brig. Gen.
Carter Ham, an official with the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, said
the insurgents have adapted to the U.S. troops' better armor and
new vehicles by building bigger bombs.

"This is a very brutal, lethal and adaptive enemy," he said.

No vehicle safe

Wednesday's attack was not the first time the amtracks in Iraq
have proved vulnerable.

On May 11, five East Coast-based Marines were killed in a
similar attack.

Pike, the analyst, echoed several other observers Wednesday who
said that nearly the entire range of armored vehicles used to ferry
Army soldiers and Marines around Iraq are vulnerable to powerful
bombs.

Most of the Marines' amtracks in Iraq have additional armor on
their sides that protect occupants from the shrapnel of more
distant explosions, but not from direct blasts of the type
inflicted by many roadside bombs and suicide car bombs in Iraq.

The Marines have begun fielding and developing new vehicles to
protect troops from the deadly explosions.

Besides purchasing thousands of better-armored Humvees and
adding additional armor onto its existing Humvees, the Marines are
now using a mine-resistant vehicle that has a v-shaped hull that
deflects blasts.

Local Marines headed back

With about 2,000 local Marines deploying to Iraq within the next
month or two, and about 20,000 local troops heading back in January
and February, some worry that the solutions are still too far
off.

U.S. troops continue to die in attacks by often simple and
sometimes improvised weapons in Iraq.

As of Wednesday, at least 1,820 members of the military have
been killed in Iraq since the war began, according to The
Associated Press.

The same reserve unit that lost 14 of its men in the roadside
bomb Wednesday lost six Marines to small arms fire during an ambush
Monday.

In Oceanside, where many of Camp Pendleton's Marines make their
home, residents and neighbors said they were saddened by the loss
of so many troops from other parts of the country in the last few
days.

"As Marines, we refer to each other as a band of brothers,
whether you know each other or not," said Dan Seaman, a former
Marine who was with his son Wednesday in a downtown pizza joint
popular with local troops. "I really feel for the families."

Others said Wednesday's attack does not bode well for local
troops.

"It's been a bad couple days for the Marines —— terrible
losses," said retired Marine Gen. Joseph Hoar in a telephone
interview Wednesday.

Hoar, a former commander of the U.S. Central Command, which is
responsible for military operations in the Middle East, said the
Marines are still suffering from mistakes made at the beginning of
the war, when there were not enough troops on hand to secure the
millions of munitions that the Iraqi army had distributed and
cached throughout the country.

He said that with the munitions in the insurgents' hands, and
recent successes against American troops to affirm their methods,
Camp Pendleton's Marines will face more of the same when they
replace the East Coast-based expeditionary force in Iraq next
year.

"It's really unfortunate," he said of the recent losses. "But I
guess the part that bothers me most is that this is becoming old
news."